If you’re like me, you may find it difficult to look at Easter from an unbiased vantage point. For me, having been a Christ-follower now for nearly forty years, I know all about the resurrection. It’s hard to conceive of viewing the day from, say, the perspective of the women at the tomb. Or Jesus’ disciples.

Unlike me, surely they were heartbroken. The dreams they had were shattered. To be one of Jesus’ inner circle could certainly have been pretty heady stuff. They could have easily begun to think that they had “made it.”

God healed people through them. They preached, and people repented of their sins. For a bunch of ordinary guys—for anyone, really—this was big stuff.

Then the unthinkable happened. Their leader was dead. And not just dead, but crucified, the ignominious death of a criminal. It would have been far better if He had just gone off and no one knew where. But to die publicly on a cross, especially at the hands of those evil Romans… well, that, for His followers, would have been excruciatingly humiliating. Or worse.

What would they do after that? Where could they go? Many people would recognize them. They had been seen with Jesus over and over. Who would want to associate with the accomplices of the Man Who died that shameful death on a cross?

Given this scenario, would you want to be counted among their number? There’s nothing left. Everything that had been their lives for the past three years was gone in an instant.

That’s where the disciples were that Sunday morning. Hope was gone. Plans were confounded. Lives were devastated. Surely they were at the ends of their ropes. How would you react in that situation?

And then, with little or no warning, Jesus appeared to them. He Who was dead, was no longer dead.

Wow! What a game-changer. Everything that had been lost was restored… and then some. Their enemies had done their absolute worst—killing Jesus—and yet He rose from the dead, conquering the grave. Their hope was not only restored, it was totally recreated. Jesus, the Messiah, had conquered sin and the grave!

That’s our message this Easter. Jesus’ resurrection changes everything. Everything! When all hope seems gone, we can still have hope… because of the resurrection.

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins… But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:17, 20).